Alessandra Bava

(USA)

Las Dos Fridas

(A Letter in Lines from Frida Kahlo to Diego Rivera)

Querido Diego,

even if you are gone and I am evidently split in dos halves, amidst stormy clouds, I stare at you cursing your betrayal in my Tehuana costume, holding your small portrait in my smeared hands. The white lace has been ripped open by my broken heart and pincers demand rivulets of blood that turn into exotic birds. My authenticity is my martyrdom. That’s why I sit proudly, as a cosmopolitan goddess, wearing no beads and bleeding all my Méxicanidad.

Alessandra Bava is a poet and translator living in the Eternal city. She is the author of two bilingual chapbooks Nocturne and Guerrilla Blues both published in Italy. Three of her chapbooks have been published in the States: They Talk About Death (2014), Diagnosis (2015), and her latest Love & Other Demons (Dancing Girl Press, 2017). She has translated several poets in Italian and has edited an Anthology of New American Poets. Her poems and translations have appeared in several journals such as Gargoyle. Plath Profiles, THRUSH Poetry Journal and Waxwing. She is currently writing the biography of a contemporary American poet.